CDs/DVDs
Barney Harsent
It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas pop albums. This is, of course, because so many of them are awful, hastily cobbled together collections of nothing, and about as much fun as munching your way through a kilo of sixpences hoping to find a tiny nugget of Christmas pudding.The idea that former Keane frontman Tom Chaplin could manage to reverse this trend might seem unlikely, but then this winter has been quite the season for shocks. From the President of the US trying to start a war in the Middle East to distract from his sexual misconduct, to a bungling burglar on a Christmas ad hugging a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe is a true prince of darkness here, picking out Leslie Caron’s beautiful eyes and gleaming mouth despite the gloom of a seedy Notting Hill boarding house. Taking a break from her usual roles as a happy hoofer, Caron plays Jane, a serious young French woman adrift in London with an unplanned pregnancy who finds herself renting an attic bedsit.Adapted from Lynne Reid Banks’s best-selling novel, The L-Shaped Room was very daring in 1962 and the film faced several battles with the censors. Not only does Jane visit a Harley Street abortionist (a creepy Emlyn Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Sia is a 21st century pop behemoth, an unstoppable figure who, despite no longer wishing to take part in the increasingly visual aspects of our social media age, still maintains a top-flight career. The best of her output hits the Venn diagram sweet spot where ear-bud phone-pop crosses over with wit and canny thinking. She’s not this writer’s bag – with the exception of Katy Perry’s smasher, “Chained to the Rhythm”, which she co-wrote – so it’s all the more of a surprise that her Christmas album proves such an endearing proposition.Everyday Is Christmas was created with another contemporary Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s that time of year again, and we’re forced to endure crap Christmas songs while waiting to pay for milk and loo rolls. The fingers of one hand are sufficient for listing the world’s only good Christmas albums and songs: Phil Spector’s Christmas Album, “Fairytale of New York”, “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”, “Merry Christmas Everybody” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. OK, that includes a thumb. As a child I was a great fan of “Little Donkey” by Nina and Frederick, and Harry Belafonte’s “Mary’s Boy Child”, with its faint hint of calypso. From Joan Baez’s long-ago Christmas album, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the last 25 years anything and everything has become possible in cinema. The budgets got bigger, the SFX more spectacular (and the audience ever more infantilised). By rights Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the first film that cost $100 million to shoot, should now look dated. This release proves otherwise. Everything about the Terminator sequel, arriving seven long years after the original, stands the test of the time.A bit like Garbo laughing, the concept of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the good guy was a quantum leap in star branding. As he explains in the extras, he wasn’t that keen on Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Alexander Armstrong is one of TV's great Renaissance men. Not only is he the genial host of Pointless, he's also an actor, comedian, and, of course, the voice of Danger Mouse. But Armstrong's first love is music. Singing earned him a scholarship to Cambridge, and, in recent years, he's crooned his way through two successful albums. It was surely just a matter of time before he set his sights on Christmas.In a Winter Light sees Armstrong trying his hand at a range of festive styles, from carols to easy-listening. Unfortunately, Armstrong's baritone is not suited to everything. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to. Tuned differently to a standard fiddle, the hardingfele does not have a set amount of strings but instead has four for playing and four or five resonating, sympathetic strings underlying those which are bowed. The baroque viola d'amore, which also has sympathetic strings, is a near relative. Once heard, the keening, resonant power of the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Doing work” is the phrase that inmates of California’s New Folsom Prison have adopted to describe the group psychotherapy sessions that have been run there for more than 15 years now. Given that Folsom is a Level-4 penitentiary, in which murder is the least of the convictions for those imprisoned, most of whom will remain locked up there for the rest of their lives, issues of access and trust must have been as challenging as any documentary-maker could expect to encounter.How The Work co-director Jairus McLeary came to resolve them is a story in itself (of which more later), but the fact Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s quite a shock to realise that industrial metal-heads Godflesh have been beating on their particular drum (on and off) for some 30 years. Under lead noise-monger Justin Broadrick, titanic riffs and weaponised beats wrapped up in claustrophobic paranoia have given the British punk, metal and experimental music scenes periodic sonic shake-ups, while also influencing many from around the world with a yen to channel their own primal screams through highly amplified tunes turned up to 11. Godflesh might even be described as a Great British Export, given their somewhat unexpected and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When Irish rock band U2 marked the release of 2014’s Songs of Innocence by loading it into everyone’s iTunes for free, it was an attempt to find a new angle on the "event release". While it was certainly that, it wasn’t, shall we say… universally well received. Thankfully, for its companion piece, Songs of Experience, the band has opted for an altogether more traditional delivery system. There will be no humanitarian air-drops of WAVs over the shire counties – you can tell the Home Guard to stand down.This, of course, means we're paying for the pleasure this time round – so what do we get? Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements. The first solo album from Finland’s Timo Kaukolampi is instead about immersive, intense atmospheres.Kaukolampi has form. As a producer, he Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jabberwocky is all the more enjoyable once you get past what it isn’t; Terry Gilliam’s 1977 directorial debut is a medieval romp starring Michael Palin and a short-lived Terry Jones, but audiences shouldn’t expect a Monty Python film. Gilliam and Palin’s bonus commentary is a joy, Gilliam describing his relief at “not having to be funny all the time,” free to let this baggy, rambling tale unfold at a more stately pace. There are many mirthsome moments, but Gilliam admits that Jabberwocky “is more quirky than funny.”The inspiration for Gilliam and screenwriter Charles Aveson was the nonsense Read more ...